NYT: Common Core Hasn't Stopped Differences in Grading

Common Core was supposed to provide a standardized system of testing so that students across the nation could be compared to each other by the same guidelines, but The New York Times reports that states have gone back to their old ways of measuring the standards by which students are considered to be proficient.

In Ohio, for instance, tests taken last spring show two-thirds of students were proficient at math reading. But only about one-third of students in Illinois were, even though they had taken the same tests.

The Illinois students didn't do that much worse than their counterparts in Ohio. The discrepancy was, instead, based on different ways of labeling the same scores.

California and North Carolina also adjusted their description of who is proficient by lumping together those who passed and those who almost passed, the Times reported. Florida, home of former Common Core advocate Jeb Bush, has sought to have less stringent passing rates.

"This was exactly the problem that a lot of policy makers and educators were trying to solve," Karen Nussle, executive director of Common Core advocacy group Collaborative for Student Success, told the Times, "to get a more honest assessment of where kids are and being transparent about that with parents and educators so that we could do something about it."

Conservatives have opposed Common Core from the beginning, saying, among other things, it hurts education by forcing schools to teach students only to pass the tests and that it takes away local control of curriculum.

That controversy has caused some states to abandon Common Core already.

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